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Congo War Criminals Fear Day Of Reckoning

How ironic that a Rwanda government whose legitimacy is based on the argument that it halted a genocide in Rwanda in 1994 now stands accused of aiding, abetting and committing atrocities in Congo.

[Black Star News Editorial]

The killers of Congolese civilians are now trying their best to elude justice.

Terrorist and self-styled General, Laurent Nkunda, is responsible for so many deaths in Congo –perhaps hundreds of thousands—that even his own rebel army, the CNDP is now trying to break away from him with the announcement today by other renegades that they had "ousted" Nkunda.

Congo has never recovered since occupation of its eastern region by U.S.-backed Uganda and its allied militias in the early to mid-2000s caused more than five million deaths. The International Court of Justice found Uganda liable in 2005 and assesed $10 billion in damages; the ICC is investigating related Uganda war crimes.

Nkunda, instigated the most recent round of massacres in Congo’s Kivu region when he launched attacks against government positions beginning in August. He is without doubt a war criminal.

He has variously played the Tutsi-card, claiming that he was protecting ethnic Tutsi Congolese against possible genocide, when in fact his wars of aggression in Congo have been inflaming enmity towards Tutsis. Even so-called mainstream newspapers such as The New York Times have now changed their tune and blame him for the miserable deaths, rapes and pillage in Congo. Only the BBC –apologists for genocide—still seem to shield him in its coverage (The BBC in recent weeks has been trying to divert focus away from Nkunda’s genocide to coverage of the conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Uganda army).

Nkunda poses a grave danger to the security of Tutsis and of all Congolese and East and Central Africans. Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch have now established that Nkunda plays up alleged threats against Tutsis in order to legitimize his criminal aggression and mineral land conquest on behalf of foreign corporations who don’t want to pay taxes to Congo’s central government. In the past few dared to expose him for fear that they would be labeled Genocide Deniers, in reference to the fact that, indeed, Tutsis were massacred in Rwanda. Nkunda’s murders and displacements of whole populations could no longer be ignored. He is a proxy for Rwanda’s devious designs of Congo’s immense wealth, as a United Nations report established last month.

The alleged renegades who claim they have deposed Nkunda say they are suddenly interested in peace talks mediated by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, in Nairobi, to halt their genocidal campaign. Only last month Nkunda, arrogantly posing in his Gucci sun glasses, as if genocide is some sort of game, had dismissed the talks and repeated his lunatic fantasy that he wanted to "liberate" all of Congo.

He has conducted the "liberation" campaign in a very curious manner: disemboweling pregnant women, hacking victims to death, gouging out the eyes and tongues of some and beheading others.

The problem is that the so-called renegades who say they are now in charge --Nkunda claims he’s in charge according to media reports—are led by Nkunda's chief of military staff, Brig-Gen Bosco Ntaganda; the good Gen. Ntaganda has already been indicted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court and there is an outstanding arrest warrant, a fact that the corrupt BBC failed to reveal in its story on the Congo today as if this was not germane information.

Since Nkunda is the commander in chief, it’s reasonable to deduce that once your chief of staff has been indicted, it’s only a question of time before your own indictment is unsealed. This newspaper reported in November that Nkunda’s indictment was imminent; The New York Times reported the same news a month later, in December.

The current power struggle between Nkunda’s terrorist organization is between two war criminals, each of whom wants to strike a deal with the ICC and sell the other one out.

The chief of staff and his commander both belong in the Hague.

The only question is how to deal with their accomplices. The ICC has been examining Rwanda’s involvement in financing and fueling the Congo genocide. How ironic that a Rwanda government whose legitimacy is based on the argument that it halted a genocide in Rwanda in 1994 now stands accused of aiding, abetting and committing atrocities in Congo.